01/06/2013

Commanding Heights

Over the past few decades, our economy has undergone some fundamental
changes — with the result that the fight for control over the
commanding heights of American economic life is still very much with us.
And it is a fight that, at least for now, the free-market camp appears
to be losing.

The commanding heights of our economy today are not heavy
manufacturing, energy, and transportation. They are, rather, education
and health care. These are our foremost growth sectors — the ones most
central to employment and consumption; the ones that, increasingly,
drive our economy. And it is in precisely these two sectors that the
case for extensive government intervention and planning, if not outright
control, is dominant — and becoming ever more so.

If there is to be any hope of reversing this trend, champions of
market economics must come to see these two sectors as the front lines
in the battle for capitalism. At stake is not only an ideological or
theoretical point, but also American prosperity.